Jim noticed his companion's stare. "What's wrong, Charlie?"
"The wind's changed."
So it had, sharp and cold now, from the northwest. Too chilly for summer. Jim waited for further explanation, but none came. He scratched his stubbly beard. Strange man, Charlie. Brave as the devil. But mighty unhappy these days.
Buffeted by the stiff north wind that flattened the grasses of the fields and creaked the trees, they rode on through the orange evening.
BOOK FIVE
THE BUTCHER'S BILL
I cannot describe the change nor do I know when it took place, yet I know that there is a change for. I look on the carcass of a man now with pretty much such feeling as I would were it a horse or hog.
89
A mild winter softened Virginia's tortured look. Softened but could not erase it. Too many fields lay stripped. Too many trees showed raw circles where limbs had been cut. Too many roads had hoof craters and wheel canyons. Too many farms had walls pitted by musket balls, windows knocked out, a fresh grave that revealed itself like a sugared loaf whenever a light snow fell.
The snow melted and the ditches filled, creating freakish sights. The head of a dead horse appeared to float on tranquil water, resembling some salvered delicacy offered at a medieval feast. The winter soil grew strange crops: shell casings; splintered axles and wheels with spokes missing; thrown-away suits of long underwear patched beyond wearing; broken brown bottles; paper scraps thick as a fall of flower petals.
Haymows were empty. Livestock pens were empty. Larders were empty. So were chairs once occupied by uncles and brothers, fathers and sons.
Three years of asking too much of the earth had inevitably marked it. The fields and glens, the creeks and ponds, the hillsides and blue mountain summits exhaled thin mist in the pale sunshine. It was the breath of a sick land.
In the cavalry of the Army of Northern Virginia, Charles had become a minor legend. His courage and concern for others made him something more than other men, his lack of ambition something less. It was said, behind his back, that the war had done things to his head.
He developed odd habits. He spent long hours with his gray gelding, currycombing and brushing him. He was sometimes seen holding lengthy conversations with the animal. Every once in a while during the winter he galloped off to see a girl near Fredericksburg, but always returned in a state of moody silence. He roamed the camps regularly in search of yellow-backed Beadle novels to buy or borrow. He read only one kind, Jim Pickles noticed — those dealing with the Western plains and the scouts and trappers who inhabited them.
"How long was you in that part of the country?" Jim asked over their cook fire on a night in January. They were dining on cush they had prepared themselves from hoarded bacon grease and scraps of leftover beef that they stewed in a little water with week-old corn bread crumbled into it. The dish was a favorite in the army and a lot tastier than the purpling meat and field peas comprising the regular ration.
"Long enough to fall in love with it." Charles used his bowie to lift stew to his mouth. Jim had no implements except a stick and could get none from army sources; the two scouts had taken a canteen off a dead Yankee and split it into a plate for each of them.
After another bite, Charles added, "I'd go back out there tomorrow if we didn't have to fight."
Startled, Jim said, "What about Miss A'gusta?"
"Yes, there's that, too," Charles said. He stared into the fire for a while.
From the darkness, another of the scouts called, "Charlie? I think your gray's loose."
He leaped up, spilling his food. He went charging through leafless underbrush in the direction indicated by the other man. Sure enough, he came on his horse frantically chewing a triangle of gray cloth; Sport had snapped his tether.
Angrily, Charles yanked the blanket out of Sport's mouth. The gray whinnied, peeled back his lips, and nipped at Charles's hand. "Goddamn it, Sport, what's wrong with you?" Of course he knew. There was no longer any forage; the horses were wild with hunger.
As he led Sport back to the customary boards and straw of winter — having publicly threatened to put bullets into the head of anybody who even thought of stealing them — he saw by the light of another fire that the gray's ribs showed regular as rail ties.
He swore again, filthy oaths. He had known for weeks that Sport was losing weight. He guessed the gray was down thirty or forty pounds from his weight at the time of purchase. The wasting away filled Charles with pain and rage, as did, to a lesser degree, the fate of other animals in the cavalry. Many were dying. Why not? The cause was dying, too. Almost every day, Hampton dispatched mounted parties to hunt for fodder, but they seldom found any. Both sides had picked the state clean.
Charles's malaise came to the attention of Hampton, promoted to major general and given a division in the latest reorganization. Fitz Lee had received a similar promotion and the other division. One night Hampton invited Charles to his tent to dine on camp beef, which neither of them would touch.
By the deep gold light of lanterns, Wade Hampton still looked fit, remarkable in view of the severity of the wounds from which he had recovered. His beard, thick and curling, had grown even longer than Charles's, and he waxed his mustaches to points. Yet Charles saw lines that hadn't been there when Hampton raised the legion. A new solemnity draped the general like a mantle.
They gossiped a while. About the unpopularity of Bragg, rewarded for his Western failures by an appointment as military adviser to the President. About the resulting demands from certain newspapers that Mr. Davis be removed in favor of a military dictator; Lee was mentioned. About reports that big John Hood had been ingratiating himself with Davis by frequently going horseback riding with him in Richmond.
Charles had the feeling all this was preparation for something else. He was right.
"I want to say something to you which I know you've heard before, from many others, including your friend Fitz."
Wary, Charles waited. Hampton swirled a little remaining whiskey in his tin cup while his black orderly cleared away battered tin plates and bent forks. "You should be nothing less than a brigadier, Charles. You have the experience. The ability —"
"But not the desire, sir." Why not tell the truth? He was sick of keeping it to himself, and if he could trust anyone to understand, he could trust the general. "I'm coming to detest this war."
Not a trace of reproof; only a brief sigh. "No one wants peace more than I. Why, I wouldn't trade the joys of it for all the military glories of Bonaparte" — points of lantern light showed in his solemn eyes — "but we mustn't deceive ourselves as some do.
Vice President Stephens and many others in the government believe peace will simply mean a cessation of the war. It won't. We have come too far. Too much blood has flowed. We'll be fighting as hard afterward, in a different way, as we are fighting right now."
The thought hadn't occurred to Charles. He examined it a few seconds, finding it both realistic and depressing. His response was a shrug, and the playing of a theme only Jim Pickles had thus far heard.
"Then maybe I'll scoot for Texas and find myself a cabin and a patch of farmland."
"I would hope not. The South will need men of strength and sense to look after her interests. In this life, we are called to use our talents responsibly."